[casualrandomcom]

The author does not know what it is meant by "deliberate practice" nowadays. Everytime they use it, they should have written "rote practice" or, simply, "practice".

[bejd]

As do most people who quote the 10,000 hours thing. Gladwell greatly simplified K. Anders Ericsson's work [0]. Most people just read Gladwell's catchy headline and miss the point. Doing something over and over != deliberate practice. In Ericsson's words:

>Expert performance can, however, be traced to active engagement in deliberate practice (DP), where training (often designed and arranged by their teachers and coaches) is focused on improving particular tasks. DP also involves the provision of immediate feedback, time for problem-solving and evaluation, and opportunities for repeated performance to refine behavior.

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18778378/

[Sakos]

I always find it difficult to square away the critical comments on HN or even studies like this with my own experience.

Focused practice on a specific thing I want to get better at or learn has always resulted in rapid improvement in that specific thing versus just trying to wing it or just haphazardly and irregularly repeating the thing as a part of a larger activity.

What might take days or weeks to learn can take hours if I consciously think about what I'm lacking, what I want to learn and what methods to use to bridge that gap, then continuously reevaluating what I do and how effective it is.

I'm not sure that'll ever turn me into a superstar programmer, but I'm fairly convinced it's the most effective and efficient way to become the best programmer that I can be within my own limitations.

I can always strive to be the best version of myself. How that version fares in comparison with others is of little relevance to me.